When Catherine, Princess of Wales, released her cancer recovery video on Instagram on Monday, it is fair to say she broke the internet. “As the summer comes to an end,” she says in a movie-style voiceover, with dramatic orchestral music playing in the background, “I cannot tell you what a relief it is to have finally completed my chemotherapy treatment.” Within 24 hours, it was liked by more than 2 million people on her official account alone.
It was a capital-M Moment: there was spontaneous kissing! (William planted a peck on Kate’s cheek as they sat side by side in a forest.) There was George peering into a camera lens and asking, “Is this filming?” (message: you – the public – are getting the real, unedited story here). There was Catherine, changing up a gear in a Land Rover Defender, as she hurtled over the Norfolk countryside (message: she’s very much back in the driving seat). There were also big, strong trees, card games (with a cameo from the Middleton in-laws), Orla the family’s cocker spaniel, cuddles, hand-holding, and so much laughing.
Predictably, the world has responded with joy to Kate’s cautious optimism after nine months of undergoing cancer treatment. But although Catherine has previously shown that it’s possible for a royal to communicate with the public in a more relatable way than sitting behind some stuffy but historically significant desk, this video is a huge departure from regular royal household comms – and her subjects appeared to love it.
“What we saw was not a member of the royal family,” commented one viewer on the @princeandprincessofwales’s Instagram post, “but a mum, a wife, a daughter and a human being.” Another reads: “I love how genuine, affectionate & free they are. Life is too short for silly protocols.”
“It’s clever,” says Tessa Dunlop, historian and author of Elizabeth and Philip: A Story of Young Love, Marriage and Monarchy. “Kate has worked out that she can control the narrative. The film is highly choreographed – she shares more in three minutes than she’s shared in two decades – intimacy between her and William, the up-close interaction with her children, the domestic setting.”
By putting her children and husband at the heart of this, Dunlop explains that Catherine is presenting a “new version of family monarchy _ before, all they had to do was stand still in a photograph.” And, she adds, “She ticked all the boxes emotionally – the film was quite telling about her vulnerability and her [health] learning curve.”
“Plus, there was “all that imagery – the reverence of the forest; the perfect vista in which to plant yourself and offset that frailty against the durability of England. There is an optimism to it”
“It’s a masterstroke,” says Tom Sykes, royal correspondent at The Daily Beast. “It’s totally digital, and it’s playing incredibly well globally. It’s also a very effective way of saying – as one friend of [the Waleses] put it to me – ‘F*** the haters’.
“It’s about, ‘Forget all that old rubbish about tradition and the stiff upper lip – we haven’t got time for it.’ It’s an absolutely seminal moment in palace comms – a huge change of tone – and it’s putting us on notice of what the monarchy is going to look like under them.”
Who could believe that it was only in March, as Dunlop reminds us, when “photogate” – that rather spectacular fail – happened, “where [Kate] thought she could just cobble together the odd photograph and shove it out for Mothering Sunday”. (A poorly edited family photo released by Kate was withdrawn by various news agencies over manipulation claims.)
“She’s learned that she needs to stay one step ahead of the game – and that’s what this is about.”
But there’s a subplot afoot. The more committed royal watcher might detect some similarities between what Kate has done here and the messaging of a certain Duchess of Sussex. Back in March, Meghan released a 16-second video trailer for her new lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard (from which we are to expect, apparently, gorgeous products for the home, garden and table, curated by yours truly).
Shot at her Montecito mansion, the trailer features “tradwife” aesthetic shots of Meghan petting her dog, dressed in a floor-length chocolate brown ball gown, Meghan arranging huge white and palest-pink roses in a vase. We are treated to Meghan whisking something in her expensive, blond-hued kitchen that’s filled with copper pans, artisanal homeware and all the other accoutrements you’d hope to find in the home of a luxury lifestyle influencer. It’s cinematic, glamorous, and all shot with a grainy focus, as if on a Super-8 camera. “They’re stylised, 1950s American shots, hijacking that Jackie Kennedy vibe,” notes Dunlop. One can just imagine Meghan’s mood board.
So could it really be a mere coincidence that Kate’s new film shares so many similarities with Meghan’s trailer? Both videos are highly curated, highly produced, and with “the same filmic vibe”, as Dunlop puts it.
To wit, some members of the public have likened Kate’s film to a John Lewis advert – it’s perhaps not surprising that the filmmaker was Will Warr, a freelancer who also made the Tesco Food Love Stories adverts, as well as films for Puma and Uber Eats.
The two royal wives have even gone as far as to apply the same fuzzy, nostalgic home-movie filter. “Kate has done an equivalent thing,” says Dunlop, “but using a much more English setting and involving the children.”
What’s more, she adds, “I think Kate’s probably learned a bit from [Meghan’s podcasts] – they’re all very carefully scripted. And Kate reads a script rather well – her voiceover here was very, very professional.”
Coincidence, then? “We know that the family doesn’t do anything without giving it a huge amount of thought,” says Dunlop. (If you want more Kate/Meghan synchronicity, by the way, a teaser for Meghan’s latest Netflix project, Polo, dropped on Twitter/X just hours after Kate’s cancer-recovery video. Polo is, according to Netflix, “a new documentary series that follows elite global players and offers an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the fast-paced world of the sport” – but you’ll have to wait till December to watch it.)
Sykes is not convinced the similarities are accidental. “[William and Catherine] have pretty shamelessly nicked Harry and Meghan’s clothes with this film,” he says.
“It’s interesting to think what the global press would make of it if [it were the other way round].” What’s more, all those PDAs in the Waleses’ video – their arms and hands entwined, shoulders being patted, hands being patted, that kiss – were surely straight out of the Sussexes’ playbook.
“Harry and Meghan are much more demonstrably affectionate with each other, while we haven’t seen such intimacy between Wills and Kate since their wedding day – surely their last known public lip kiss.
All of a sudden, the common ground between Kate and Meghan is beginning to become more solid: they’re both modern “princesses” – and both millennial women (Kate is 42, Meghan is 43) – who have chosen to tell their own stories, with a tightly controlled narrative, via digital media.
We may think we’re seeing behind the scenes, but we’re not really – they’re doing it their (or perhaps Meghan’s?) way. Plus, they’ve both married equally difficult princes from the same complicated family – you’d think they’d get on like a house on fire.